Discover What the Bible Says about the End of Time Some Christians give a lot of attention to the end times. Others choose to ignore it. Interestingly, the phrase end times doesn’t appear in the Bible, at least not in the NIV. Though four subheadings, added later, do carry this phrase. The End Times These […]
An Academic Pursuit of Religious Knowledge Can Cause Much Harm When I wrote about the dangers of pursuing a right theology, I noted that God doesn’t want us to know about him. He wants us to know him on a personal level. In our pursuit of knowledge, we seek to categorize our understanding of God. […]
We Must Take Care of the Poor Among Us As we read through the law of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, we come across a command that says that we are to “give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart” (Deuteronomy 15:10). We might have the inclination to dismiss this command […]
Be Sure to Follow Through on What You Promise to Do Have you ever promised God that you’d do something for him? Sometimes these occur from the Holy Spirit’s stirring within our souls. Yet other times, these come at a traumatic moment in a person’s life when they’re in the middle of a crisis. They […]
We Demonstrate That We Follow Jesus through the Things That We Do I’ve written that we should treat love like a verb. I also suggested that we’ll do well to view Christian as a verb and not so much a noun (and certainly not an adjective). We should do the same thing with faith. Yes, […]
Consider Your Attitude toward Church and Your Motivation for Going When I listen to people talk about church, I often hear what draws them in and what drives them away. They enthuse about programs for them and the youth group for their kids. They gush about the skill of the minister delivering inspiring sermons, the […]
Leviticus Warns Against Everything Unclean, but Jesus Has a Different Response I’ve never met anyone who likes the book of Leviticus, and many admit to skimming it when it comes up in their Bible reading plan, yet a thoughtful read of this often-tedious book reveals startling insights. Today’s section talks about the unclean: unclean people, […]
Study Scripture and Then Use Other Resources as Needed My book Jesus’s Broken Church was about a decade in the making, perhaps longer—maybe even a lifetime. When I sensed something wasn’t right with how today’s church functioned, I begin praying and searching for answers. Over time, piece by piece, God’s Holy Spirit revealed the answers […]
We Must Consider What Our Life Produces The word fruit appears nearly two hundred times throughout Scripture. Coupling the word fruit with the word bear, as in bear fruit, bears fruit, and bearing fruit occurs twenty-nine times, split between the Old and New Testaments. Jesus often talks about the fruit that people bear, with the […]
Consider Your Response to Receiving the Greatest Gift Anyone Could Ever Get Paul tells the church of Philippi to work out your salvation (Philippians 2:12). He doesn’t say to work for your salvation. They’ve already received eternal life as a free gift through God’s goodness (his grace), and there’s nothing they need to do to […]